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news

Does This Mean We Have to Have a Tug of War with London Now, Too?

By David Topping

20100312nowTimeOut.jpg
Top two covers: NOW‘s latest issue. Bottom one: Time Out London‘s in May 2009.

In the battle of east vs. west Toronto, there can be no winn—zzzzzz.
Oh, sorry. Right: this week’s NOW cover feature pits the city east of Yonge against the city west of it, with two separate covers (the top two, at right). For the feature, NOW staged a tug of war between the two sides on Breakfast Television, because that whole idea makes a lot of sense. BlogTO wrote about the issue, noting that if there is “some deep-seated animosity…between the East and West,” the division should be marked by the Bloor Viaduct instead, which, sure. Eye parodied the whole thing with a mini-feature pitting the city’s north and south sides against one another, which is the closest anyone’s gotten to pointing out yet that the whole premise is pretty goofy. (What are we, Berlin? People care about this, at all?)
So we will perhaps leave it at this, noted by a commenter on Eye‘s article: Time Out London has been doing more or less the exact same thing that NOW just did—splitting their city in half and letting each side battle it out—for a while, and Time Out London‘s May 7, 2009 cover sure looks an awful lot like NOW‘s covers this week—same concept and same execution, from the graffitied all-caps text on a wall, to the tagger mid-spray with their back turned to the camera.
It is times like this that we are reminded of Alien vs. Predator‘s tag line.

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Comments

  • http://undefined duck

    Springfield rules, suckers!

  • http://undefined Peter K

    Of course it’s goofy, especially since NOW’s universe is confined to the area between King and College, Sherbourne and Bathurst.

  • http://undefined Robsonian

    i love the comments (largely on the NOW article, and NOW’s facebook page) which focus on NOW’s too-narrow view of the city; they’re so stunningly overblown, and people get SO angry when their own personal Toronto isn’t included.
    An aggregate: “FUCK YOU NOW MAGAZINE! TORONTO EXISTS OUTSIDE OF THE CHURCH-DUNDAS-DALHOUSIE-GOULD BUBBLE YOU LIVE IN, YOU AGED HIPPIES!!”

  • http://undefined SACPOP

    Oh what is this, the UN?
    Yes Torontoist, Toronto is all one city with the same timeless and universal values. Don’t let NOW Magazine and their vulgar comparisons distract you from your virtuous goals of municipal harmony and inclusiveness. Shame on goofy, provocative NOW for writing about a topic we hear about every time a friend is apartment hunting. This is a city sans frontiers! Which, sure.
    Come on, utopias are boring!

  • http://undefined W. K. Lis

    What about the battle royal between 416 and 905? Is Steeles Avenue a no-man’s-land? What about the 905 refugees who sneak across the frontier to use the public transit subsidized by the 416ers?

  • http://www.weekendpictures.ca weekendpictures.ca

    If it wasn’t for the 905ers, Toronto couldn’t function as a city.

  • http://www.publicspace.ca Jonathan Goldsbie

    The best thing is how Now’s Tuesday press release described what the covers would look like:

    On March 11, NOW Magazine makes history by creating two separate covers – one promoting all things great about living in the east end of town and one cover depicting all things wonderful about living in the west end!

  • Darren

    That makes no sense what so ever, as major urban hubs use tolls to take advantage of suburban commuters while we give them a free pass. We actually make it more conveniant for them then for us; case in point the last 2 times the Lakeshore East GO train has had delays, the TTC gave free rides to those people who would normally use GO. So they rode it for free, and most likely end to end further crowding the service people paid to use and who live in the city.

  • http://undefined rich1299

    If there is a divide for me its between north south, older and newer parts of the city. I always prefer to live in the older parts of the city that were designed before cars were king, that way I can walk to nearby stores and have easy access to transit and I don’t need a car to get around.

  • http://undefined Edward Keenan

    Regarding the title: an East vs. West (of the Atlantic) issue is a great idea for a Torontoist vs. Londonist crossover post.

  • http://undefined torontothegreat

    I would take your idea further and have all the “ist” sites get in on this lol. I think it could be fun.

  • http://undefined thelemur

    You mean that isn’t something Michael Hollett needs to be told?